Top Items:
Washington Post:
Obama's Afghan policy speech at West Point — Following is the transcript of President Obama's speech Tuesday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. (The Post's report on the president's address is here.) — Thank you. Please be seated. — Good evening.
Discussion:
ABCNEWS, Ben Smith's Blog, Salon, Ross Douthat, Hot Air, Hit & Run, Stop The ACLU, American Thinker, Shakesville, Outside The Beltway, Laura Rozen's Blog, Another Black Conservative, New York Times, The Huffington Post, msnbc.com, Time, Washington Times, The Hill, Associated Press, GlobalPost, The Atlanticist, PostPartisan, EconLog, Taylor Marsh, unbossed.com, American Power, Tom Watson, The Reaction, The Democratic Daily and SWJ Blog
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Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:
This I Believe — Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can't agree with President Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I'd prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place.
Discussion:
Michael Calderone's Blog
Fred Barnes / Weekly Standard:
A Disappointing Speech in Support of the Right Policy — President Obama's speech on Afghanistan was disappointing. Yes, the policy is right: more troops, a counter-insurgency strategy, a stronger alliance with Pakistan. But the personal commitment of the president to pursue the war …
New York Times:
Two Messages for Two Sides — WASHINGTON — President Obama went before the nation on Tuesday night to announce that he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. And Mr. Obama went before the nation to announce that he had a plan to end the war in Afghanistan.
Paul / Power Line:
What I heard tonight — Earlier today I wondered whether President Obama's speech about Afghanistan would sound more like a description of a war plan or a structured settlement of a legal dispute. What I heard tonight tilted decidedly in the latter direction.
John Dickerson / Slate:
Obama's Afghanistan speech was confusing.
Obama's Afghanistan speech was confusing.
Discussion:
The Politico, Commentary, New York Times, Bloomberg, Lynn Sweet, Guardian and Politics Daily
Marc Ambinder / The Atlantic Politics Channel:
Lunch With The President: The Politics Of Obama's War Plan
Lunch With The President: The Politics Of Obama's War Plan
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
Live-Blogging West Point
Live-Blogging West Point
Discussion:
AMERICAblog News, Taegan Goddard's …, The Politico, Politics Daily, Taylor Marsh and Opinionator
William Kristol / PostPartisan:
A war president — In his Monday open letter/cri de coeur …
A war president — In his Monday open letter/cri de coeur …
Discussion:
Weekly Standard, The White House, Hot Air, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Gateway Pundit and Don Surber
Jesse Lee / White House.gov Blog Feed:
The New Way Forward - The President's Address
The New Way Forward - The President's Address
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, ChattahBox News Blog, Indecision Forever, Clive Crook, BLACKFIVE, SWJ Blog and Michelle Malkin
Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone's Blog:
Obama lunches with top political writers
Obama lunches with top political writers
Discussion:
The Lonely Conservative
Ronald Bailey / Reason:
The Scientific Tragedy of Climategate — Can climate change science recover from the damage done by leaked emails? — Climategate. What a hot mess. Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and their colleagues around the globe may have fiddled …
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Josh Cohen / Google News Blog:
Google and paid content — As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google News and Google Search? In fact, they can do both - the two aren't mutually exclusive.
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BBC:
Google to limit free news access — Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. — The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.
Jeff Poor / NewsBusters.org:
Matthews Calls West Point, Site of Obama Speech ‘The Enemy Camp,’ ‘Strange Venue’ — Either MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews let one slip tonight, or it was an extremely poor choice of words. — Following President Barack Obama's Dec. 1 speech, which he announced his intentions …
Hotline On Call:
Tanner To Retire — Rep. John Tanner (D-TN), a leading Blue Dog Dem, will retire at the end of his current term, Dem sources tell Hotline OnCall. — [UPDATE: Tanner released a statement late tonight confirming the news. “Betty Ann and I had considered retiring in 2007 at the end of the 110th Congress …
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Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
THERE ARE 39 OTHER GOP SENATORS.... NBC News announced the line-up for this week's “Meet the Press.” Take a wild guess who'll be on. … I especially loved the “Exclusive!” with the exclamation point, as if this were a rare, special occurrence. — For those keeping score at home …
Discussion:
msnbc.com
Victoria McGrane / The Politico:
Bernanke hearing brings Fed critics — There probably couldn't be a worse time for a Federal Reserve chairman to come up for renomination. — Public trust in the once-revered central bank is so low, it now ranks below the Internal Revenue Service in opinion polls.
Discussion:
The Page
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Christopher Soghoian / slight paranoia:
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight — Disclaimer: The information presented here has been gathered and analyzed in my capacity as a graduate student at Indiana University. This data was gathered and analyzed on my own time, without using federal government resources.
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg — It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online. — To make this possible …